But This Is Wondrous Strange | Ed. 11
Week the 16th: We Sit and Ponder, Together, Alone
Spring Ain't Waiting
Greetings, program!
Yes, I am old! Tron was available on one of the shifting streaming video services I or one of the others in the apartment subscribe to or are trial-ing. The graphics are outdated, but somehow not unbelievable. This might be an advantage of nascent computer graphics. In early days, when Tron was among the vanguard, the blocky, flat forms which were often set against simple backgrounds—in this case, lots of black and straight lines—existed in their own realm for the most part. As modeling and rendering improved, CGI was easier to compare to reality, and quickly became outdated. The first Harry Potter film compared to the last shows how quickly graphics evolve, and in general, more lifelike textures and movement in close-up replaced stiff, clunky medium-to-long shots. I didn’t watch much of this early computer world, though. More on that below.
I meant to finish this last week, but pandemics make mincemeat of time. Is it the 35th? Is it Marpril? Who can say.
Ready, Set, Wait
A little TOO quiet
The weird part of quarantine is that for me, this is not a time I’m finding comfort in nostalgia. I’ve started several films, albums, books, and games that I loved years ago. Invariably, I’ve indulged in their comforting familiarity for 10–15 minutes and then flipped to something else. I feel like looking ahead. I want new things. I’ve got a couple hundred songs on my Spotify To-Listen playlist that all came out since January. I have several new and old-but-unread books calling to me from my shelves. I’ve started watching several new Netflix items. I bought Stardew Valley (I’ve got my eye on Sam, but so far I’m too busy clearing and arranging for romance).
All this is telling me what I expressed, awkwardly, a week after quarantine started in late March: that I don’t feel as anxious or depressed about the pandemic as I thought I would, and I feel ready to accept any emerging world, post-isolation. It might be grim, and it’ll almost certainly be difficult. Still okay with it. I’m preparing to help and to learn, and that seems the most hopeful and supportive position I can take, right now.
Of course, there isn’t much to do in a societal sense at the moment, because quarantine has not ended. Even here, I suddenly realized I hadn’t done the newsletter in many days, its urgency and presence in my day just vanished in a swirl of vague cycle of light and dark. Time isn’t so much marching as being casually dragged along. The only thing to do is make stuff with all those hours piling up.
The monkey mind wrench in the works is that my motivation to create and accomplish is really, really low. This is a paradox, and I welcome suggestions on how to get it unstuck a little bit. Freedom.to has helped a lot, but isn’t enough. Updates to come.
The Sideline Gist
The reading has gone a bit wonky, as well. I’ve slowed my progress in Dune, but go in fits and starts in the following:
- Infinite Detail by Tim Maughan
- Every Tool’s a Hammer by Adam Savage
- The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
- The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
I might throw a few reviews around if I ever finish another book.
Have a few hyperlinks, won’t you?
- Incoveniently timely, The New York Times broke down the, well, breakdown of the project that was sourcing and building a cheaper ventilator.
- A solo sailor who posts voyage videos to his YouTube channel, Sam Holmes uploaded his documentation of a sailing trip from L.A. to Hawaii. The solitude mirrors a bit of the tense trepidation many of us are feeling in our homes, but is also enthralling and joyous.
- Wendell Berry is one of the great living poets, and I found a video from a few years ago of him talking about life and his work.